


What the Future Holds

by blueblack-poked-stars (delicate_mageflower)



Series: I Was Lost Without You [2]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Bipolar Shepard, Colonist (Mass Effect), F/M, Fuck Cerberus, Gen, In-between relationship, Inspired by Music, Mass Effect 2, Other, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self Harm, Sole Survivor (Mass Effect), Substance Abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-10
Updated: 2018-01-28
Packaged: 2019-02-13 02:47:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12974133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delicate_mageflower/pseuds/blueblack-poked-stars
Summary: Carrie Shepard became the first human Spectre and saved the Citadel, leaving herself a legacy. And then she was lost in an attack on the Normandy.And as far as she is concerned, a resurrection putting her in the pocket of the enemy is not at all an acceptable alternative to death.[each chapter is delicately crafted around a different song, which will always be linked in-fic, and listening ishighlyrecommended; ongoing playlist also availablehere]





	1. Breaking Every Law of Science

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Intended listening: [Placebo - "Haemoglobin"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuvD4d80vJ0)
> 
> CW for substance abuse, suicidal ideation, and effectively self harm

Carrie Shepard is dead.

Until she’s not.

She died a soldier, a hero. She is reborn a traitor, a travesty.

And she resigns herself to this fate.

Afterlife is her kind of place. She isn’t sure it would ever have been before, but everything has changed and nothing matters.

The first time she was here, she was poisoned. That’s when it became her favorite place in the galaxy.

She’s agreed to play nice with Cerberus because they’re on the same page this time. She’s agreed to work with Cerberus because they acknowledge the Reaper threat, and stopping the Collectors is vital to their shared goal.

Well, “agreed” is a bit of a stretch. She never _actually_ did any such thing, and to say she did implies having had a choice in the matter.

She’s cut off from everything and everyone she used to know. She died and left her whole life behind. Her heart breaks for Kaidan, having no idea that she’s alive and that she misses him desperately. She hates the thought of him somehow finding out, of him hearing about it from someone else.

She can’t think about it. Carrie Shepard died with the Normandy SR-1. Whoever she is now has to live with all she is preparing to do, who she is in league to do it with.

She can’t dance any better than the old Commander, but she is apparently a lot more willing to try.

When she was younger she liked to drown her demons, to try to kill them with any chemical she could get her hands on. That changed with active duty, that pulled her from that path while it was still possible to do so. The Alliance likely saved her life a second time with that.

But she’s not Alliance anymore. She’s made a deal with the devil, and that makes those demons of hers fair game.

She has agreed, for lack of a better term, to see this mission through. If anything were to happen to her along the way, though…

She’s putting together a good team. Not the one she wants, not the one she _needs,_ but these dossiers are promising. She doesn’t yet know what to make of Miranda or Jacob, but they’re certainly capable. She doesn’t need to lead them. They want to use her as some sort of figurehead and that’s fine if it keeps them motivated, but they don’t really need her, not like they think they do.

If anything happens to her, they can call Kaidan. They can call Garrus or Wrex or Tali or Liara. They’ve all seen the same shit she has. They all understand the situation as well as she does.

It doesn’t need to be her.

So she comes to Afterlife to dance, to drink, to fight.

She comes to Afterlife to escape. Commander Shepard died with the Normandy. Who she is here and now is irrelevant.

She has come unarmored, looking only to blend in. She does her best to match the beat of the music, not to flail too wildly about. Eyes are on her from all directions, but not for who she once was.

She wears next to nothing, the fucking dancers are dressed more conservatively. This isn’t like when she was 18 and went to sleazy clubs like this to get wasted and laid. She has no intention of the latter, anyway.

She was ready to rest, ready for silence. She still doesn’t understand exactly how she ended up here, how such a thing is possible. It would have been a kindness, to let her stay dead. Because _this_ isn’t living.

And so she dances.

She grows more graceful with every drink. Her movements more fluid, her body more in time with the bass and the flash of the neon lights.

At some point, as always seems to happen on such nights, she will cross her threshold, she will tumble over the line and punch the first person who stares at her ass for too long. But this is Omega. She can do whatever the hell she wants.

She feels as though her feet don’t touch the ground, she moves so inelegantly. But she is defiant. Incoherent and defiant.

She was cut off from her future, and now she ostensibly has one back. But if that future is as Cerberus’ bitch, she does not want it. She does not want any of this.

She doesn’t make any sense, she shouldn’t be here.

And so she dances, drunken movements flowing together in their own way, so far gone now that she blends in entirely, disappearing into the crowd, falling away from herself.

There is a beauty here, amongst the violence. It’s too empty on the Normandy, too hollow. And much too bright, she feels like she’s under interrogation in some old timey vid everywhere she goes aboard that thing. The lights are blaring here, too, but it’s different. Here they shine down on her to contrast the darkness, here they flash in color to take away from the void beneath it. On the Normandy, the light and the darkness are one in the same, the brightness only drawing more attention to the black hole it’s become.

Jacob and Miranda are around here somewhere, ready to drag her to her feet and back to that godforsaken ship when she inevitably requires intervention. Miranda will lecture her on her irresponsibility and Jacob will ask her how she’s holding up after Miranda leaves the room.

They’re on Omega for a reason, though. _Reasons,_ in fact, plural. They’ve yet to put too much effort into finding either of their potential recruits, and _this_ is why.

Because the first time Shepard was here, she was poisoned. Ever since then, drinking here feels like playing Russian roulette, is a thrill all by itself.

Her heart beats to the rhythm of the music, in time with the gyration of her hips. She is so far gone by now that everything becomes surreal, that her vision blurs and her head spins.

Everything _is_ surreal, though. She should not have a heartbeat at all. But she’s been rebuilt, implanted with an artificial perseverance that isn’t hers, wishing she could give it back.

“Can I buy you a drink?” Someone is talking to her, but she’s not listening.

Another human. He comes up close behind her, places his hands on her hips and tries to move with her. Up until she elbows him in the gut and whips herself around, holding back the momentary need to be sick to disable him, swiftly pinning him to the floor on his back.

Everyone’s looking at her. Some look almost scared of her, others ready to accept a challenge.

Beauty in chaos, in the violence.

Aria’s already starting to respect her.

This is not one of her finer nights, however. It ends with the human she took down having a few friends who wouldn’t stand for watching their buddy getting his ass handed to him like that, and even she could only do so much when it turned three against one and she was hardly staying on her feet on her own before that. She fought tooth and nail, but unarmed and unarmored, it was only a matter of time. She could always pull out her biotics, but she’s not sure even Aria would accept that. And she refuses to lose this.

From there it goes as ever, with Dr. Chakwas checking over her scrapes and bruises and then Miranda going on about the importance of the mission while Jacob looks on. She thinks he might feel guilty about how much working with Cerberus eats away at her. She thinks eventually she’ll explain why.

Shepard is dead. Until she isn’t. Except that she is, and there’s no coming back.

But there’s always Afterlife.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While it is not obviously not mandatory per se, I cannot possibly stress enough how strongly I have intended the listening of the song that accompanies any given chapter.
> 
> Also, I will make a point to put any necessary warnings in the beginning notes of each chapter, and tags and potentially rating will be updated as we go.
> 
> And my apologies to anyone who has read any of Carrie's story before and is therefore having things repeated at them, I am simply making no assumptions.
> 
> Also a note that I currently have absolutely no idea how or even if I am going to be tagging relationships for this part of the series because I don't want to clog the tags inappropriately. While the OTP/overarcing theme is of course Carrie and Kaidan, obviously this being ME2 will complicate writing that as a legitimate pairing this time, and Carrie does not remain faithful to Kaidan during her time with Cerberus. How this disaster goes on to treat the people she so engages with is not at all a reflection of how I personally feel about these characters, or even how she really feels about them, but a consequence of what a mess she is and how poorly she handles this game.
> 
> Fic title taken from the Mass Effect 2: Atmospheric soundtrack.


	2. It Won’t Give Up, It Wants Me Dead, Goddamn This Noise Inside My Head

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Intended listening: [Nine Inch Nails - "The Becoming"](https://youtu.be/ue22DMbw_QQ)
> 
> CW for alcohol abuse and suicidal ideation

“You fucking remember,” Shepard seethes at Garrus. They’re hiding out in a back corner in Chora’s Den and she is absolutely shitfaced. Again. “You fucking know the shit I saw chasing Kahoku, you were _there.”_

She doesn’t even mention Corporal Toombs. She doesn’t need to.

“But you _weren’t_ there after you died, Shepard,” Garrus snaps. “You…you weren’t there. You didn’t see what it was like.”

That stops her. For a moment there, he almost thought she was going to punch him. He still isn’t entirely convinced she isn’t. She is angry as hell, that’s clear. Not at him, not really at _anyone._ Any one particular person, anyway. She’s angry at Cerberus as an institution, she’s angry about the Collector threat, she’s angry about the situation she’s been forced into.

She is fucking angry, and it’s scaring the shit out of him.

“I don’t trust Cerberus, either, Shepard,” he tries, anyway. “But they brought you back. That’s gotta be worth something.”

“They’re _inside of me,_ Garrus,” she yells. “Fucking Cerberus, they made _this._ I’m dead. I, _me,_ whoever the fuck that was…she’s fucking dead. And here’s a shell of Cerberus circuitry built out of goddamn Reaper tech to take her place.”

“Shepard—”

“Shepard,” she laughs. “Shepard isn’t here. Long live Lieutenant Commander Carrie Nesiah Shepard, of _the Alliance,_ dammit, who died tragically in 2183 and should have been left to _rot in fucking peace._ Let’s drink to her!”

Garrus takes a deep breath, fully aware of how much he is going to regret what he’s about to say, but he has to try. _“Shepard._ Hey. Maybe you’ve had enough to—”

That’s when she does take a swing at him, but she’s just slow enough in this state that he’s able to dodge the blow fairly easily.

This is exactly his friend Shepard, though, whether she sees it or not. She’s out of control, out of her damn mind, but he can still see her in there, the same person he knew back then. She’s buried under guilt and fear and ire, but she’s in there and he’ll be damned if he isn’t going to try to bring her back to the surface.

In place of Garrus’s face, however, her fist hits the wall behind him, and she starts _screaming._ No words, no substance, only desperation uncontained.

She nearly drowns out the music, the other patrons, the sound of it awful and ringing through Garrus’s head.

She is broken, but she’s in there. She has to be.

“Let’s get out of here, Shepard,” he tries again after a moment, once her shouting dies down into harsh, panicked breaths. He doesn’t want to take her back to the Normandy, but he needs to get her the fuck out of here and he isn’t sure where else to go. “Come on.”

“No,” she shakes her head. “No, please. Nowhere to go. Nowhere safe.”

Garrus isn’t sure _anyone_ has ever seen her like this before. On the old Normandy, it was always Kaidan she let in when things got bad, but he doesn’t know if it ever got like _this_ back then. Anderson knows her better than most, as well, but even for as far as she’s let him in, the same thought applies.

She isn’t doing this on purpose, either. Were she not slipping so far away, he doubts she’d ever show this to him.

That’s how he knows what a mess she’s truly in.

“I’m no better than fucking geth,” she says between inhales and exhales so rough they sound painful. “I’m a fucking Cerberus machine. I’m dead. Let me decay. Fucking kill it.”

This is a nightmare she’s trapped in, it has to be. She tells herself over and over that this can’t be real, that tomorrow will come and she will wake up, she will escape this.

But tomorrow never comes. But those wires and circuits keep her blood pumping, leave her with nowhere to run.

So she tries to drown out her feelings. She tries to be someone else. She tries to get away.

She is so far away.

But not far enough.

She can’t make it disappear. She can’t make _herself_ disappear.

“I can’t do this,” she adds hoarsely.

She can’t _breathe,_ and it hurts to try.

Her head spins. It’s so loud. Everything is too fucking loud.

The Alliance can’t save her this time. She doesn’t know if she _wants_ anyone to save her this time.

“Yes, you can,” Garrus tells her. He knows there’s no getting through, not when she’s this out of it, but he’s not giving up on her. He won’t.

She’s still in there. He won’t let her bury herself any further if he can help it.

“Fuck it,” he sighs to himself. She can give him hell over it later, that’s fine, but he will _not_ stand idly by as long as he is there with her.

He grabs her by the arm, holding tight, and he moves forward, forcibly pulling her out of this shithole. She is in an even worse state than he’d guessed, too, because she hardly even tries to fight him on it.

She goes through the motions once they get outside, resigned to following him out of there to sleep this off.

Garrus does not, in fact, drag her back to the Normandy, however. Not this time. He calls to tell Miranda, who doesn’t sound happy, but she doesn’t argue. She’s starting to like Shepard, though, starting to open up to her, whether she’s realized it yet or not.

He finds a cheap motel in the lower wards and checks them in, eventually getting her to settle into one of the dirty twin beds provided.

He wants to be surprised by how many times sleeping in the same room as her results in his being startled awake by her screaming throughout the night. She calls out for marines of previously unspoken names and ranks, presumably her unit on Akuze. These are names she does not remember in waking life, but in dreams it appears that they are right there to torment her.

This is killing her, working with the people responsible, he knows. He can’t say he’s surprised by finding out for himself how bad her night terrors truly are, but this does not make it any less devastating. It occurs to him that she is probably his best friend, and he loves her like a sister.

And he doesn’t know what to do.

Neither does he have any clue how he’s going to explain where they are to her in the morning, but he suspects he will have to, suspects that she will not remember how she got there.

And if he’s being entirely honest, it might be better that way.


	3. Alone, I’m Thinking

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Intended listening: [Our Lady Peace - "Superman's Dead"](https://youtu.be/a9MOV4LHO34)

Life goes on in Shepard’s absence.

For some. For most. But not for everyone.

Time doesn’t stop for grief, though, not even for Kaidan.

It’s been two years. Two years, and a lot has happened.

He took some shore leave after the Normandy went down. He went home to visit his parents, to try to clear his head. And after about a month, he’d somehow even managed to convince Hackett that it had worked.

He hasn’t kept in touch with the old crew much. He meant to, he _wanted_ to, but he just…didn’t. After losing Shepard, nothing felt right about anything anymore. And when everyone went their separate ways, he completely isolated.

He thinks about everyone from time to time, even now, but it’s been too long to reach out and he isn’t sure he knows how.

But the weather in Vancouver is nice this time of year. As it was two years ago, when he had to force himself to sit outside. It was nice, having long conversations over beers on the balcony with his dad again, but it was so hard not to lock himself in the house and refuse to leave it like he did after BAaT.

He’s come a long way since then.

But fuck if he doesn’t miss Shepard every goddamn day.

She’s been heralded as a symbol, a savior. She was practically likened to a damn messiah for humanity. But now she is no one.

The symbol, the superhero is dead.

And Kaidan all too often feels like he’s the only one left who remembers her as anything else, anything _more._

He fakes it as well as he can. It’s been two years, after all, it had to start feeling almost routine eventually. It’s not okay, it’s not better, but it’s…whatever _this_ is.

And he’s been promoted, given his own command. He imagines she’d be excited about that. He imagines she’d be proud of him.

He could reach out to Garrus, to Tali, to Liara, to Wrex. He could if he really wanted to. He doesn’t know why he doesn’t.

He’s thought of reaching out to Joker, as well, but rumor has it he’s gone AWOL. Kaidan has a hard time believing it, has a hard time imagining Joker capable of such a thing, but he’s never looked further into it.

He’s made friends as best he can on his new crew, although it isn’t the same and he doesn’t want it to be. He doesn’t mingle like Shepard did, he doesn’t make casual conversation the same way. She was always far better at it than he, anyway, but he simply has no interest in it now. He keeps his distance, for the most part keeps it professional. He’ll never regret that Shepard didn’t command that way, but he doesn’t want to get too close to anyone new, particularly not anyone new who also happens to be on active duty.

He thinks about her every day, even when the rest of the galaxy seems to have forgotten. She’d probably have loved that they stopped treating her like she was special, that over time her image became that of any ordinary soldier.

He remembers how upset he was when they put her on the Alliance military recruitment advertisements. He remembers how much more upset he was when they took her off.

He never imagined her legacy would die with her. He never imagined they’d kill the hero.

Enough of her infamy is left over, however, that _everybody_ knows who _he_ is. He’d overheard more than a few of his crew whispering amongst themselves about recognizing him, about how their new CO had been the first human Spectre’s significant other.

He almost doesn’t care that his notoriety is evidently defined by hers. Lasting reputation doesn’t matter to him much; as long as he can be an effective leader who keeps his squad intact, he’s done a good job, and that is more than enough.

He’s lost too much already.

He remembers the small service they’d held for her at Arcturus Station shortly after her death was confirmed. A body had allegedly been found, although no one had anything to say about that. He wouldn’t have wanted to see it, anyway. Exposure’s one hell of a way to go.

He wonders if she suffered. He’s sure she did, but he wonders how much. He wonders if staying behind, if refusing to leave without her would have changed anything. He wonders if he could have saved her. He wonders how much he sounds like Joker when he thinks that.

But he does. He wonders. She gave him an order as his commander and he followed it, but he may always regret acknowledging that order as a soldier instead of a fucking person.

A fucking person who would never admit to anyone that he’d briefly let himself browse through rings on the extranet. It was only one time, and he stopped himself before he let his mind run too far away on him, but it stands that the thought had crossed his mind. He loved her—he _loves_ her—and he hates himself for not letting his personal feelings come before professionalism.

That’s why there are regs against fraternization to start with, he knows. He had never intended to break those regs before he met her, but it no longer matters who he ever meets from that point on. He won’t be breaking them again.

Everyone said a few words at her memorial. Everyone but Kaidan. He couldn’t even speak to anyone privately after. He wanted to tell Joker that it wasn’t his fault. But he didn’t. He didn’t say a thing.

He thought he saw Anderson cry. He couldn’t be sure, it was fleeting and only upon catching him at the wrong angle after he’d turned his back. It didn’t necessarily surprise Kaidan, to see Anderson break character like that. He and Shepard were basically family, despite how under wraps they tried to keep it. Kaidan finds it a safe assumption that it had never been addressed.

Shepard is dead, and two years later, there are few left to care.

Shepard is gone, and too often forgotten. But not with him. Not in his head.

Kaidan is heading to Anderson’s office on the Citadel, and perhaps that is why this weighs on him so much more heavily than usual.

Not that it is ever a light burden, but…

The anniversary passed not long ago, too. Two years haven’t made it easier.

Some of his crew have been trying to set him up on a date. They say they want to see him to smile, to see him learn to laugh. He hadn’t realized he was so transparent. They mean well and he does like them, but they think they’re better friends than they are.

He no longer worries about friendships. He no longer worries about being liked. They don’t know, not really. Not as much as they think they want to, but they know certainly far more than they need.

It’s fine. It’s enough.

At least as far as Kaidan is concerned.

And yet he never stops desiring approval from Anderson. Not simply as Captain or Councilor, either. But almost like Shepard did, like Shepard had.

His command comes as a direct result of Anderson’s word, too. She would really love that.

He walks right past a storefront exclaiming “I’m Commander Shepard and this is my favorite store on the Citadel” without noticing.

So he definitely does not know how recent these endorsements are. He does not know, either, how terribly angry at herself she was for making them after the fact, how afraid she is of him hearing them.

He doesn’t know that he is only a rapid transit away from finding her, that she is currently only several floors below him, shooting back cheap whiskey at Chora’s Den, just as she had before recording a message for practically every damn store that this one is her favorite. He doesn’t know that she was standing right where he is only an hour or so ago.

All he knows is that Shepard’s dead, and nothing can make that stop hurting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I imagine it says a lot about me that not only did I post this on Christmas (I'm sure anyone already familiar with Carrie has assumed that I am Jewish, and that assumption would be correct, but I am also in an interfaith relationship and therefore do still celebrate Christmas with my boyfriend’s family, so…yeah, that's still A Thing), but also that this chapter in particular is legitimately very high up there among my favorite things I have ever written, lol.
> 
> I am really trying to work out how _not_ to make this piece a full on angst factory as it goes, though. ME2 is just very, very rough on Carrie.
> 
> I also feel like I have managed to settle on a good relationship tag for this part of the series (especially as it does not seem to appear in the actual Kaidan/Shepard tag as many other prefaced versions do), as I think "ambivalence" sums it up between them in ME2 fairly well. Carrie and Kaidan do love each other very much, even at this part of the story, but it is (obviously) definitely a struggle.


	4. The Famous Living Dead

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Intended listening: [My Chemical Romance - "This Is How I Disappear"](https://youtu.be/paFCInMIPfA)
> 
> CW for alcohol abuse, physical assault, predatory dudes in bars, emetophobia

Shepard lies sprawled out on the floor of Chora’s Den, and the left side of her face has turned a deep shade of purple. The other human involved in this altercation is still standing, yet he looks far worse for the wear than she: face bruised and swollen, nose bleeding.

He spits out more blood, making a small show of casting it in her direction, and muttering curses under his breath as a C-Sec officer who’d just so happened to be having a drink in his downtime escorts him from the premises, complaining all the way about how badly he’d needed a damn break.

“He won’t be welcome back here,” a bartender shakes her head at Garrus. “And when she’s up, you get her the fuck out of here. She’s done, too, we clear?”

“Yeah,” Garrus replies. “Yeah, we’re clear.”

Getting kicked out of Chora’s Den…

Fuck, things really _are_ bad.

Oh, how far down she has sunk.

No one cares who she is down here. She gets recognized more and more, but only caught in whispers overheard.

Although her status may yet have something to do with the fact that it’s taken this long for her to be turned away.

“Hey, fucker had it coming,” Joker sneers.

“I don’t give a shit, it is not my fucking job to mop blood off the walls,” the bartender snaps, evidently still within earshot. “We get our share of lowlifes around here, but there’s a goddamn line. Get your friend moving and get the hell out.”

“Hey, fuck you, too,” Joker hisses, although making sure no one aside from Garrus can hear him this time.

In fairness, he _did_ deserve whatever Shepard wanted to do to him, but it isn’t as though this is the first time she’s caused a scene here over the past couple of months. In reality, it was only a matter of time.

The other human had gotten a bit too handsy, even by the dubious standards of Chora’s Den’s regular clientele, and Shepard simply wasn’t having it. He grabbed her, she punched him. And she punched him again. And then again. He made a snarky comment about not retaliating because he was “going easy on the girl,” and that’s when Shepard went below the belt. After that, he swung at her, and she didn’t even try to defend herself. And that’s how she ended up on the ground.

She twitches momentarily as she begins to open her eyes, and the only concern from here is getting her to Dr. Chakwas. She’s taken worse hits, god knows, but her bruises are already almost black and she looks like pure hell.

Garrus and Joker alike would be lying if they said they weren’t grateful that these nights here are no longer an option. She’s sure to find another bar to lose herself so severely in soon enough, but it’s nice to be able to dream of reprieve.

Neither of them are sure when the last time they saw her sober when she wasn’t actively in combat was. Neither of them are sure she is even always sober on missions anymore.

There are two dossiers left, a convict and a krogan warlord. Every time it comes up, she asks for her old team back. Every time it comes up, she is told to focus on the now and stop living in the past.

Every time she focuses on the now, however, she ends up like _this._

Desperate to escape the unforgivable, that which she can never explain away.

Desperate to let go, to drown out all the noise inside her head, to disappear.

Garrus tells Joker to get back to the Normandy ahead of him, gives him the head start. The close proximity of rapid transit stops was the only reason he’d agreed to go out with them.

He was wary of it, though, not because of his mobility, but because he was afraid of what he might see.

He’s heard the chatter. He knows Kelly worries, he knows Dr. Chakwas has treated many an unnecessary injury. And he knows Garrus, Miranda, Jacob, Mordin, Kasumi, and Zaeed have all seen it first hand.

He didn’t want to see it for himself, though.

It’s been hard enough to talk to her, and she actually _does_ talk to him.

She isolates from most, however, tries her best to hide away and wallow, in public as much as in private.

But she is so far from herself and everyone else, and she has nowhere to run.

He tries so hard not to blame himself for all of this.

He still can’t help but blame himself for all of this.

Meanwhile, Garrus is doing his best to quell the situation left before him.

“Easy, Shepard,” he says gently as she slowly reaches to take his extended hand.

The angry bartenders look away once he gets her sitting, but he spots another of his old fellow C-Sec officers, dressed casually but glaring intently at them from against the nearest wall. Their eyes meet, and then they look away. Garrus wonders if he’s undercover, if Shepard’s got other friends who are worried about her, watching out for her in their own way.

Fuck knows she needs all the help she can get.

He finally gets Shepard standing, and he prays he can get her back to the ship before she gets sick, because it does not look good.

“Okay, time to go,” the bartender from before insists once she sees that Shepard is up. “Out. Now.”

Shepard tries to say speak, but nothing comes.

She does not, unfortunately, make it all the way back to the ship, causing quite a stir upon exiting their cab to the loading dock.

Garrus apologizes for her profusely, not sure what else there is left for him to do.

She tries to cry out to him, to protest being led back onto the Normandy.

It’s so bright. It is so fucking bright.

She chokes on her words, can’t get them out.

But when she lies down in the med bay, Garrus already having relayed their evening to her, Dr. Chakwas is quick to get her a blanket, which she carefully uses to cover her eyes.

“What did she have this time?” Dr. Chakwas asks Garrus. She’s been learning to get creative, to make sure she can still feel anything. She had a high tolerance before she died, but it’s nothing compared to where she is now.

“I think it’s safe to say that batarian ale and burukh _do not_ mix well,” Garrus sighs. “On the plus side, Chora’s Den is now officially too fine an establishment to serve us.”

“And _this_ is why I took leave from the Alliance,” Dr. Chakwas notes. “I couldn’t possibly leave her alone with Cerberus.”

“I know, Doctor,” Garrus tells her. Because of course he does. Because neither could he.

“Alright, Commander, I’m going to need you to look at me for just a minute,” Dr. Chakwas tells Shepard, uncovering her tightly closed eyes.

Her pupils are unequally dilated in her unfocused stare, and her black eye speaks for itself.

“Thank god for the advancement of medical science, Commander,” she continues, opening up cabinets for medications Shepard will fight her about taking, although it’s a fight the doctor will not take long to win.

And with the way she worries over Shepard, she isn’t going to be sleeping any time soon, that much is clear.

“Between the concussion and the impending hangover, I’m going to recommend putting off any life or death missions for at least the next 24 hours,” Dr. Chakwas tells Garrus. “And you can tell Ms. Lawson that that’s on _my_ orders.”

“The Illusive Man will love that, I’m sure.” Garrus sits down without thinking about it, and hearing Shepard start to panic and cry the way she does now almost doesn’t even faze him anymore.

“Maybe mention something to Ms. Chambers, too,” Dr. Chakwas adds quietly. “I’m glad you’re here, Garrus. You and Joker. Maybe between the three of us, we’ll get out of this mess after all.”

Shepard has told Garrus that she doesn’t always believe she’s real. She’s told Garrus that she wonders if she was ever here to start with, or if when she died she never really did come back. She’s told him that she isn’t with him, that she’s a just ghost who can’t be saved. That there is no heaven, only hurt.

“Yeah, I’ll do that,” Garrus says. He’s noticed something between Shepard and Kelly, though. He’s seen the way they flirt, and he was more than a little surprised to learn that Shepard knows Kelly’s real job and yet does not push her away.

That bodes well. That has to bode well.

That has to mean she can get through this, that she can come to live again as more than this ghost she fears she has become, that she will not always have to feel so lost and alone.

Next stop, however, is to the bridge, to check on Joker.

“So, how shitty is it that sometimes I wish she’d never come back?” Joker asks when Garrus takes a seat nearby. “Am I just like the galaxy’s biggest asshole or what?”

“No, you’re not,” Garrus answers. “Sometimes I…”

It’s too hard to say it.

“Fuck, Garrus, why the hell did she have to come back for me?” Joker punches his chair, and he tries to hide his wince at the pain of it. “This could all have been avoided if she had—”

“Let’s not do this right now,” Garrus looks to the floor. “Does it really matter, who died for what?”

“Fucking look at her.” Joker briefly covers his face with his hands, but he makes sure to look back at his board before that fucking AI can comment. “If I had known Shepard was gonna die saving my stubborn ass, and then we’d be working for fucking Cerberus…”

Maybe this wouldn’t hurt so much.

Maybe this could ever stop hurting.

“What do you think of Kelly?” Garrus asks, and Joker doesn’t even acknowledge what a stark change of subject it is.

“I don’t know, man, ask a people person,” Joker shrugs. “Haven’t talked to her much. Why?”

“Just wondering,” Garrus says flatly. “I should probably have a chat with Miranda about taking it easy for a day or two.”

“Yeah, the Illusive Man will love that, I’m sure,” Joker chuckles.

Garrus chuckles a bit, himself, taking in the odd touch of solidarity. “Yeah, well, then he should have fucking thought about that before his people ran thresher maw experiments on Akuze.”

But they can do this. They can, and she can. They won’t let her disappear.

And they can get through this. They can.

They can.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here's my headcanon for the reason bars never return between games.
> 
> Still planning to get this fic down to, like, only 90% angst eventually, though.
> 
> Just…I've said it before and I'll say it again: I don't hate ME2, but my Shepard sure as fuck does.


	5. Let Me Sink in the Silence That Echoes Inside and Don’t Bother Leaving the Light On

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Intended listening: [Fiona Apple - "The Child Is Gone"](https://youtu.be/q3TUNtl9s7c)

For most aboard the Normandy SR-2, recruiting Jack is cause for constantly looking over one’s shoulder at best, a source of anxiety. But for Shepard, recruiting Jack has just fucking hurt.

She is not afraid of Jack, not in the slightest. She wonders if perhaps she should be, but she can’t bring herself to it.

She sees Jack and she sees only the way she had personally backed her into a corner, the way Jack had looked around for an escape route with sheer terror on her face, her reaction at the realization that she was trapped by Cerberus with no options aside from to leave with them or die.

She has done to Jack exactly as the Illusive Man had done to her.

And it’s not okay. She’s not okay.

Jack was a child once. Innocent, undeserving of the horrors she was put through by Cerberus. But she was never a child at the same time, never had the chance to be. A child was taken, removed from whoever she could have become on her own, from any chance she might ever have had to belong somewhere.

Jack definitely does not belong _here,_ and the fact that Shepard has brought her on board makes her begin to fear that maybe _she_ does, after all.

And Shepard finds herself drawn to Jack, finds herself constantly reaching out to her. Predictably, however, Jack always does her best to push her far away.

Jack does not want Shepard’s sympathy, and Shepard has to wonder which one of them it’s really for that she is so desperate to give it to her.

“I don’t want to talk,” Jack hisses when Shepard hits the bottom of the subdeck stairwell. She never says anything, but a part of her likes it down here, too. It’s dark, quiet…vacant, aside from Jack’s presence, which is practically an absence most of the time, anyway.

“What are you going to do if I don’t leave?” Shepard asks coldly. “You could kill me before I had time to blink. But you don’t.”

“Is that a fucking challenge?” Jack isn’t sure if this question is serious or rhetorical. She cannot imagine bringing herself to admit it, but she is intrigued by Shepard. She hasn’t asked and she doesn’t care, but she gets the feeling that Shepard feels as trapped here as she does.

“Is it?” Shepard retorts. “Your call.”

Jack has lived by one rule and one rule only for years now: trust no one, never get close.

But in her fucking soul, there is a push so far out of her control it feels more like a coercion to let her guard down for Shepard.

“What’s your deal, Shepard?” Jack asks after a pause. She doesn’t want to ask. She doesn’t want to care.

Cerberus destroyed whoever she might once have been, and now Cerberus is using her again.

And getting all buddy-buddy with the person in charge is, obviously, not part of the plan.

Don’t get close, don’t get attached.

Don’t trust anyone, but especially don’t trust anyone working with Cerberus.

“What are you going to do once we get out of this?” Shepard sounds distant. “Run off to the Terminus, build up a merc band, kill everyone on this ship? Take the fight to the Illusive Man himself?”

“That what _you_ dream about at night?” Jack tries to sound casual, leans back and crosses her arms.

“Sometimes,” Shepard admits, and Jack is every bit as surprised as she isn’t surprised at all. She can’t get a read on Shepard yet, and it freaks her the fuck out to think that her intentions of getting to know and even helping her might be genuine.

“Just sometimes, huh?” Jack shrugs, feigning nonchalance.

“You must get more sleep than I do,” Shepard sighs. “This mission is important, Jack. We have to see this through. But if we survive this and you want to get back at me for pulling you into this mess, then…I won’t stop you.”

Shepard hasn’t told anyone about the email she recently received from Corporal Toombs, not even Joker.

One nice thing about this ship is giving her quarters its own floor. It’s made it a lot less likely that she’ll bother anyone else when she wakes up shouting amidst her dreams of Akuze.

And it’s getting worse.

“Shit, have you been drinking?” Jack laughs, but she already knows the answer. Fuck, when has Shepard _not_ been drinking?

“It doesn’t fucking matter,” Shepard says with a shake of her head. “I know what Cerberus is, Jack. I know the shit they’re capable of. They’ve hurt you. They’ve hurt me. They’ve hurt a lot of people. They brought me in and I fucking hate working for these scumbags, but then I did the same to you. Helping these bastards this time matters to more than just the Illusive Man, I have to keep telling myself that. But they didn’t rebuild _you_ from scratch. Even with all the shit they did to you, they might not see you as an investment anymore. You might be able to cut and run. I don’t know what’s in my future. So if we survive this, and you want revenge…I’m just saying I won’t blame you.”

Up until now Jack has wanted little more from Shepard than for her to take her sympathy and shove it. All of a sudden, however, there is a strange inversion and Jack is the one feeling for Shepard this time.

And this is equally uncomfortable.

She doesn’t know what Cerberus did to Shepard. She knows Shepard’s a famous war hero or some shit, whose past is notorious and whose life story is basically all public knowledge, but she’s never heard much of it. Life on the run and cryogenic imprisonment haven’t exactly left her time to catch up on news. And she doesn’t care. She reminds herself that she doesn’t care.

Life on the run and now a suicide mission. It’s understandable she’s not always in the loop.

And she doesn’t know to take the heavy implication that the leader of this suicide mission truly does intend for it to be exactly that, at least for herself.

Jack doesn’t belong here, but clearly neither does Shepard.

And nothing can make this alright. For either of them.

“Are you done?” Jack forces herself to bring her walls back up. She doesn’t want to care. She knows better than to care, has learned the hard way too damn many times. She can’t let herself care.

“Yeah,” Shepard answers quickly enough. There’s nothing left to say.

Jack almost stops Shepard when she starts back up the stairs. Jack almost stops her. Almost.

Of all fucking places to start making friends…

No, she can’t. She can’t. That’s from a life lost, a life meant for a stranger who never came to be. That life didn’t get to start, and that chance is gone.

But Shepard gets that, at least to some extent. She doesn’t have to know the details to know that Shepard probably gets it better than anyone she’s ever met before.

She doesn’t know what to make of this. She doesn’t know what to do with it.

Right now she will sit here alone in the dark where she belongs, and she will do her best to pretend she isn’t worrying about how far gone Shepard could be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy birthday to me, ahahaha.
> 
> But look! This is like...actually still better angst-wise!


	6. All That We Loved Is All That We Feared

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Intended listening: [Faunts - Left Here Alone](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRhLr9sP6UM)
> 
> CW for some brief but potentially squicky depictions of violence, and there's just a lot of general PTSD described all throughout
> 
> This chapter is for [dismalzelenka](http://archiveofourown.org/users/dismalzelenka)

Akuze.

She always dreams of Akuze now.

After enough ryncol to kill even a small krogan, she may actually sleep through the night.

But she will spend it on Akuze.

She had made 1st Lieutenant after the Skyllian Blitz. She’d been on the ground there and while she didn’t play much of a part in the grand scheme of things, it was enough to get her promoted.

She was so young, yet so early into her military career. She’d been waiting, waiting for a chance to prove herself, waiting for something big to save her from herself.

The Alliance saved her from Mindoir and they saved her again by forcing her to cease her self-destructive recklessness enough to remain fit for duty. She owed them so much and she needed to show them, needed to do her best for them. She needed to do better to carry her own ass out of the fire, and climbing the ladder was the only way she knew how.

She was ready, even eager. Not quite a Jenkins, but she had an enthusiasm all her own, waiting to begin.

But she didn’t know. Nothing could know.

She had no idea what she was walking into when she landed on Akuze. A whole colony had gone missing, so a team of fifty had been assigned, with the young Lieutenant Shepard in charge.

They didn’t find anything their first day there. Or anyone. A long day of exploration and it was time to camp for the night.

And then, there was panic.

In her dreams, there _is_ panic.

None of them have ever seen a thresher maw in real life before, and no image or vid could ever possibly prepare for what it’s like to meet one face to face.

And she is lost to it, reliving it again after god knows how many times already.

She remembers again. It’s hard to let go.

The first tremor shakes the camp, immediately placing everyone on high alert. It is nighttime, her surroundings silent and cold.

And then its head emerges.

Shepard orders everyone to grab their weapons and check their shields, running around the camp as quickly as she can.

Gunnery Chief Marshall, however, is the first to prove that shields are entirely ineffective against acid spit by a thresher maw. She never even saw it coming, dropping on contact. And she is only the first to die this evening.

Shepard can’t stop for her, though, can't do a damn thing. She was meant to lead, and she yet has 49 more marines to try to get out alive.

“This is Lieutenant Shepard, requesting _immediate_ evac,” she shouts into her omni-tool while simply hoping to get her people into sufficient hiding until pickup. “I repeat, we are in need of immediate emergency extraction—”

She finds herself cut off by the sound of screaming, and it would be impossible to say whose. There is so much screaming, so little else to do.

Everything moves so slowly. There is chaos and violence all around her, the likes of which she hasn’t seen since she was 16 years old, and her mind locked her out of most of those memories a long, long time ago.

She feels almost like she is dreaming. She is fading in and out of herself, but a part of her us able to remain present enough to hold her position while the rest of her simply has to watch herself go.

“Cover,” she orders to anyone who can hear her. “Try to find cover!”

She can’t think of anything else. Lost in the night, overcome with fear, with no real options. By this point it is already a safe assumption that she’s going to die on this planet with all the rest. But fuck if she doesn’t have to try, to at least try, to do _something…_

“What the fuck does it look like we’re doing?” Corporal DeLisle snaps, and Shepard glares at her but does not reprimand. She can’t blame anyone for speaking out of line at a time like this. She’s not sure there _is_ a line at a time like this.

There is another shout, and Private Blum hits the ground, acid rapidly eating through his armor.

Shepard screams into her omni-tool, pleading for a rescue ASAP.

She is trying so hard to stay calm. She doesn’t know how much longer she can pretend she isn’t spiralling towards a full on panic attack.

Not that anyone could blame her. No one could have known what this night would bring, what this night would take. No one could know the fear they would find, the people they would lose.

But this is _her_ unit. Her first command. And she has already seen too many of them die. But she’ll carry herself, she’ll keep going. She has to.

Slow and faded, just like dreaming.

From the corner of her eye, she catches Corporal Toombs being dragged under, presumably by a tentacle…or arm, or whatever you call them.

She gets a response: an ETA and a navpoint for the nearest possible landing zone.

She transmits the navpoint to the team and starts yelling, “LZ! LZ, ten minutes!”

But it doesn’t look like anyone notices.

Her fellow soldiers are falling all around her. Soldiers in her charge. Soldiers whose blood now stains her hands.

Corporal Wyatt, Private Boulton, Lieutenant Horn, Service Chief Prinze, Private Emery…

So many names and faces lost to the night, whose memories never stay with her until day.

A few run are able to ahead of her, and she provides them covering fire. A lob of cluster grenades should buy them a few extra seconds, anyway.

Fuck, though, the way that thing moves, the way the ground shakes beneath them…

She came in with a team of fifty. She isn’t sure how many are left, or even how much time has passed, but in either case she knows it’s not enough.

Everyone…she’s losing _everyone._

(Why is she always the survivor?)

She trips. The ground rumbles as the thresher maw again slithers underneath, leaving cracks in its wake, and she loses her footing.

Her heart beats faster, and for a second nothing is real. Silence is all that she hears, drowning out her surroundings.

“Ma’am!” A voice brings her back. Lieutenant Feinglass offers her hand, helps her up.

Everything she knows about thresher maws, while that is admittedly not too much, tells her that this one is especially aggressive. Something is off about this, there feels like more at work here than any of them know.

The ground is splitting, the thresher maw so quick and the quakes so severe. That’s how Operations Chief Keener goes.

Shepard puts up a barrier as strong as she can muster when Private Brooks falls to acid barely a meter from her.

She shouts again, beckoning anyone left to get closer. She can expand the barrier, can protect more people if they walk with her. She doesn’t know how long she can hold something as big as she’s picturing, but she has to try.

She has to try.

She’s already left so many behind, but they’re nearing the landing zone.

Some of those left standing still have their weapons, are trying so hard to fight back, but with so little success. It gets a good few shots, she sees it recoil from a blow more than once, but it’s never down.

And she can’t prioritize offensive strike right now. She has to keep track of her people, what’s more important to her is running. She doesn’t know if they even _can_ kill it on their own, and her unit’s survival is more important than its death.

Her unit’s survival…

Corporal Baker is grabbed like Toombs. She sees a few others suffer that same fate, but their bodies are so battered they are unrecognizable.

Privates Moss and Black are able to move to Shepard, Lieutenant Montano close behind. She expands her barrier and despises the part of herself that hopes no one else makes it to her. She doesn’t mean it, and the fact that she even thinks it leaves her hoping she’s next to die, but it does not take long for covering four people with so little energy to start with to take its toll on her.

This is unsustainable, she knows. But she has to try. She has to get them to safety, as many as she can. She has to see that some of them see the light of day again.

There is so much more screaming behind them. She doesn’t even look. She couldn’t save them. She couldn’t do anything.

She’s losing her unit like she lost her family, like she her home.

She can lose her shit completely about _that_ parallel later, though (and oh how she will). She can’t stop to break down just yet. She has to keep to what’s around her, to _who_ is still around her. She has to carry these souls, no matter how much her heart is breaking.

If she were to take the time to think about it, she would never be more grateful for repressing Mindoir as she has. She would have to be ever so grateful for not being able to remember all that was taken from her there.

(Why is it always her?)

This is so much. This is too much.

It feels so familiar, too, but she can’t deal with that. She pushes it away. She has to push it away.

She can’t fade off into the night. She can’t get too lost inside her own mind.

Another tremor and the ground breaks. Her barrier falters as she and those she had been able to protect to this point are in exactly the wrong place. Somehow, some-fucking-how, she is able to latch on to the ground above her before she falls too far. She somehow pulls herself up, somehow finds herself topside. But that small team are nowhere to be seen.

And she’s so close to freedom, so close to getting the hell out of here.

And that’s when it grabs her. It takes her by a leg, its grip so strong it breaks it instantly, and she closes her eyes, powerless. Its other arms wave, brushing her with its talons. With no other options, she accepts her fate. Anyone left has the coordinates. Hopefully someone makes it to the LZ. No reason it needs to be her.

She feels a wave of biotic energy and hears the burst of gunfire, and she is dropped with a roar that rings in her ears and drills into her very bones.

Even now, though, it all moves so slowly. She almost feels as though she is underwater, lost to the sea. She is yet fading, yet moving as if dreaming.

There is nothing she can do about her leg, and that thing had badly scratched her up while it had her. Her armor is cracked and she is bleeding, and that much would normally be treatable in the field but there’s no time for medi-gel. 

And she’s pretty sure their medic is currently underground.

She tries to get to the marines who just saved her life, tries to bring back her barrier. She doesn’t even know if that’s at all effective, given the uselessness of their shields, but she has to believe it’s worth trying.

If she could get it going. She’s fading fast, as injured and overextended as she is.

But she’s almost there.

It’s that damn acid that gets them, those brave soldiers who got too close because she was in need. She somehow makes it far enough away in time, limping and holding a hand over her open wounds.

She is crawling by the time she sees the shuttle land. She doesn’t know how she made it or how long it took her. An ensign jumps out for her, picks her up into a fireman’s carry to bring her inside.

She insists on waiting for more survivors, begs the pilot not to leave without them.

“I can’t hang around here, Lieutenant, it’s too dangerous,” he insists. She never did learn his name.

“We can’t…there has to be…” She doesn’t want to leave them this way, they have to wait. It’s not right to leave them, to let go of all hope.

But she’s fading. There isn’t enough fight left in her.

“Oh shit, she’s bleeding pretty bad,” the ensign notes. She never learned her name, either.

The pilot takes that as his cue. Shepard feels the momentum, and she physically cannot yell at him to stay where they are.

“I’m gonna get you some medi-gel, okay?” The ensign’s voice is soft, sympathetic. She shakes her head, and taking off has evidently given her body permission to feel how injured she really is. She is suddenly in searing pain, and all at once she is hit with what just happened. She wasn’t entirely inside herself while she was on the ground, and now she cannot escape.

She starts to panic, her body heaving. She shakes so badly it’s making it impossible for this poor ensign to help her.

She hears herself call for her parents, but thankfully no one will ever speak a word on that.

She is in so much physical pain and in such a state of emotional overload that she is downright writhing, aggravating her leg and terribly exacerbating the whole experience.

She doesn’t remember anything between then and being brought into a med lab. She doesn’t know what happened. She figures it’s equally likely that she was sedated or passed out or simply dissociated the whole way back. She doesn’t ever ask. She doesn’t speak of any of this any more than she absolutely has to.

And years after, she is in a lab on Ontarom with Kaidan and Ashley.

“Toombs?” Her voice shakes, shakes like that beast is back beneath her feet. “But…I saw you die on Akuze…”

_“Some organization, Cerberus…”_

It was Cerberus.

“Shepard was there, she knows the truth!” Kaidan is so quick to their defense.

Against Cerberus.

It was Cerberus who killed them.

She considers letting Toombs shoot the Cerberus scientist himself, she really does. But legally that’s murder, she’s not wrong despite his protests. He’s been through enough, she won’t leave him open to such consequences. And it it feels damn good killing that man, she can’t lie, like a weight being lifted. For Toombs. For her.

For all they lost.

She didn’t want to leave them this way. Everyone, all of them.

It’s hard to let go.

Harder, still, colluding with Cerberus now. Her soul is so heavy, it hurts to carry.

She wakes up alone, breaking through the silence. But she never really wakes up anymore. She’s dreaming, always, lost in this nightmare that does not fade off with the night.

Day breaks and so does she. When she was with Kaidan, she could always find love waiting for her when she woke up like this. And even without him, when she was alive, she could usually force herself to find something else to focus on.

When she was alive…

When she was Alliance. When she was herself.

It’s hard to let go.

And now she’s here, lost in a sea of guilt and fear and rage and increasing self-destruction. All she’s doing, all she’s done, she tries so hard to forget. None of this is right.

She can’t wait for this to end.

She is so alone. She has never felt so alone.

***

Kaidan dreams often of the Normandy attack. These restless nights have followed him for over two years.

And now, to hear all this speculation that she’s _alive…_

He wants the rumors to be true, of course he does. But he isn’t sure whether it scares him more if they aren’t or if they are. 

Where has she been, then? Why hasn’t he heard from her?

His heart is breaking. His heart hasn’t stopped breaking since he saw Joker alone in his escape pod, crashed down on the freezing cold surface of a desolate planet, silent and serene aside from the loss consuming them and the weight they all carried down there.

He didn’t want to leave her this way. He shouldn’t have left her.

It’s so hard to let go.

He hadn’t expected love to be waiting for him when he was assigned to the Normandy. He knew this would be big, they all did, and it was even bigger than they knew.

He remembers again, the first time he saw her, the very last days of 2182, a lifetime ago.

It was New Year’s Day on Earth when they struck down on Eden Prime. That was meant to be symbolic somehow, he’s sure. Even before they knew what they were walking into, though, this was always going to be monumental. The Normandy was revolutionary all on its own, and the fact that Shepard was being scouted for the Spectres…

It was the day after that when they both knew it was all over, being able to ignore this attraction. It was after that when they knew that even though the regs call it wrong, all this was right.

Nothing could know what was happening. No one could have anticipated what was to come.

Sometimes he dreams of Brain Camp when he dreams of her. She was the first person besides his parents to whom he ever opened up about it. He’s dealt with it as well as he ever will—as well as one ever can—and he never once asked for or even really needed her help, but she offered it to him all the same. She listened like no one else before, and he let her in like he’d never let anyone prior.

So it can be too easy to follow down that path when remembering her weighs on him so much, when it plagues him like this.

He remembers losing Rahna, how much he’d scared her when he killed Vyrnnus. But he remembers Vyrnnus attacking her, remembers seeing her arm break. It was awful, watching her that way. But it wasn’t the blood or the bone showing. It was that Rahna was innocent, and Vyrnnus had done enough damage. He remembers the first life he saw taken. He doesn’t remember the kid’s name, but he knows that he was younger. He knows he’d tried so hard to be good enough for Vyrnnus. Maybe too hard.

He remembers again. And again and again and again and again.

He longs for the day any of this ever feels all right again. One day it has to feel right again.

Day has to break eventually. He has to find the light, has to wake eventually.

It’s hard to let go.

He’s seen the end. He needs it to begin again.

But if she really is alive…

It hurts so much to think on, one way or the other. Either way, he’s left here alone, either way it weighs down his very soul.

But nothing can know. He has his own command now, has work to do. He’s trying his damnedest to keep the headaches under control.

He had a migraine for two fucking weeks before he sought help after her funeral. He can’t pull that shit when he’s running a ship.

But he can always fade off into the night. He can always find her there, waiting for him.

It scared him sometimes, how much he loves her.

It still does.

It’s so empty here without her. It’s so tragic that she had to leave him this way. But it’s unthinkable, the idea that she survived somehow.

She could never leave him so alone, not if she’s made it somehow.

He doesn’t believe she could do that.

But god if he doesn’t still hope it’s true.

He can’t even imagine seeing her again, what that would look like, how that would feel.

What she would tell him, how she could ever explain away all this time.

He’s overheard a few times now, too, a new addition to those rumors: that not only is she alive, but she’s with Cerberus.

And that makes even less sense to him than her miraculous survival.

He was with her when she found Corporal Toombs. He was with her when she found out what Cerberus had done to her. Just as he was with her chasing Rear Admiral Kahoku, and finding his body. Just as he was with her after Ontarom, too, having to see her so desperately have to turn away from him on behalf of regs, and how badly he’d wanted to hold her. Just as he was with her on more than a few nights when she’d dreamed of it, when he finally could hold her and keep her close and help her get back to sleep.

He feels so lost. He is so alone.

But he doesn’t know how to cope with the thought that she’s left him this way. He’d give anything to take her back into his arms, to have her by his side again, but he’s so afraid of what that would mean.

But it’s hard to let go.

He doesn’t know. He has no clue what to make of any of it. He only knows his heart is always breaking. It’s breaking for himself, breaking for her.

And not a thing can know.

He takes in his surroundings when he wakes from another restless night. This is not the Normandy and there’s no Shepard.

Just Kaidan. Commander Alenko.

It kills him to remember. It kills him to carry this.

It’s too hard to let go.

He takes in the silence around him, embraces it while he can still have it. This ship isn’t as quiet as the Normandy, but he’ll take what he can get.

He prefers the silence. He prefers the solitude.

Losing the first person he’s ever truly loved the way he did…

It’s hard to let go. He carries her with him everywhere, and he knows his team can see. But it’s not their business. It’s his, and he doesn’t think he ever wants to let it go.

He’s left here alone without her, but that doesn’t mean he has to forget her.

Left here alone, but he doesn’t have to let her go.

Nothing can know. But when he remembers her, it’s all as right as he can make it. Not a thing can know, but remembering makes it every bit as much easier as it does harder to sleep.

He doesn’t know how to face the rumors, but as it is right now…

It’s hard to let go. So he won’t.


End file.
